June 27, 2016

Book Smarts Vs. Wisdom and Common Sense

One belief that is almost universal among elitist secular progressives is that those who hold college degrees -- especially advanced degrees -- deserve far more respect and have more credibility and intellect than those who do not. This liberal maxim played out in the mainstream media's coverage of last week's Brexit vote.

If only I had a dollar for every time it was reported that "younger, college educated adults voted overwhelmingly in favor of Great Britain remaining in the EU, while older, less educated people voted to leave the EU." The implication is that those who voted to remain in EU are enlightened progressives -- wise, forward thinking and perceptive of the revered global community.

A couple of things come to mind. First, the notion that because someone holds a college degree, he or she is intelligent and capable of critical thinking is downright laughable. The inanity and stupidity gushing from the mouths of college students and graduates proliferates the airwaves, Twitter, Facebook, et al. In my 56 years, I have known of quite a few people without college degrees whose intellect, common sense, achievements, wisdom and real world experience put to shame those of most college graduates. I have also observed college graduates who made me aware of how low standards have fallen at so many institutions of "higher learning."

Without question, I have learned far more on the job and through self-study (mainly just reading a lot of books, columns, essays and white papers) than I did in college. Of course, we're talking about 30-plus years rather than 22 years. But that in itself leads to my second point: The media jackals imply that because someone is 40, 50 or 60 and has worked blue collar jobs all his life and has little or no formal education, he is a neanderthal dunderhead (feel free to add favorite pejoratives of the leftist jackals: hater, xenophobe, bigot, Nazi, etc....)

I beg to differ: Many, many people do not have college educations, yet possess tremendous intellect and have been hugely successful. Granted, not all of them end up as successful as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Rush Limbaugh or Oracle Corp. founder Larry Ellison -- college dropouts all. But many of them do have knowledge of history, basic economics and individual liberties as enshrined in the Magna Carta or U.S. Constitution. And even if they don't, they usually have "street-smarts" and know what works in the real world as opposed to in theory.

These people have seen how their country -- be it England or the United States -- has suffered by wrong-headed policies foisted upon them by clueless, detached bureaucrats and apparatchiks whose heads are in an insular fantasy world, be it academia, Washington think tanks, federal agencies, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, what have you....

Most of these elitists either have outright disdain and contempt for the "great unwashed" common folk in flyover country, or at the very least, they simply don't think of them or consider them at all. In other words, you and I aren't even on the radar screen when it comes to the grandiose schemes and pie-in-the-sky policies of the establishment elites.

But those who live with the consequences of those policies, laws and actions coming down from on high are deeply resentful of the hardships they must endure. Let's not forget, the hypocrites at the top -- they of gated communities, chauffeured limousines, elite country clubs and European vacations -- often exempt themselves from the policies, regulations and laws they shove down the throats of the people they lord over.

People in Great Britain and the United States are disturbed by a crush of third world immigrants, many of whom do not speak English, will not assimilate, will burden the social service safety net and change the character of neighborhoods and schools. They are fed up with having unrealistic environmental extremists dictate policies that raise utility bills, make automobiles more expensive and close down factories.

They are wary of stagnating wages, jobs being off-shored and their leaders bending over backwards to grant H1-B visas to workers from India while British-born or American-born workers with the same qualifications cannot find a job. There have even been cases of longtime American tech workers being forced to train their replacements (whose salaries would be 1/3 or 1/2 what the Americans were paid). Disney Corp. did just that a few months ago. This kind of crap is the real, harsh world that the elites don't know or care about, and don't have to deal with.

We need major pushback against the media's biased, dishonest and misleading reporting. As far as I am concerned, Donald Trump's poll numbers will remain solid as long as he keeps hammering the corrupt media as vigorously as he does the pathological liar and criminal Hillary Clinton.

Because the fact is, the average American or Brit probably holds the media and the elitist establishment types in even greater contempt than the media and elitists feel for the common folk. And that's saying something!

Comments

Sounds like Allen Grayson, Democrat
Representative from Florida.

Whenever challenged or questioned, he immediately recites his "Harvard Law" credentials using it as a trump card to verify his moral infallibility. An intellectual smack down if you will, to scare off the doubters.

He's saying we little people should all tuck tail and whimper back to our miserable middle class existence.